Violence against gays preached in British mosques claims new documentary

Channel 4 will transmit controversial programme this evening that claims anti-Semitism and homophobia are being preached at a leading British mosque.

Dispatches documentary Undercover Mosque: The Return, “goes undercover again to see whether extremist beliefs continue to be promoted in certain key British Muslim institutions,” the channel said in a press statement.

The film also investigates the role of the Saudi Arabian religious establishment in spreading fundamentalist Islamic ideology in the UK.

“A female reporter attends prayer meetings at an important British mosque which claims to be dedicated to moderation and dialogue with other faiths.” said Channel 4.

“She secretly films shocking sermons given to the women-only congregation in which female preachers recite extremist and intolerant beliefs.

“As hundreds of women and some children come to pray, a preacher calls for adulterers, homosexuals, women who act like men and Muslim converts to other faiths to be killed, saying: “Kill him, kill him. You have to kill him, you understand. This is Islam.””

The programme will also feature Muslims and Islamic academics who reject and condemn these teachings of intolerance and segregation and warn of the impact this version of Islam is having on British society.

One imam at a leading university accuses the Saudi religious establishment of the: “distortion of Islam itself, the abuse and misuse of this great faith of mine and not only mine but of my children as well.”

In May Channel 4 and independent film maker Hard Cash accepted damages and an apology at the High Court following a row over the original Undercover Mosque documentary, broadcast in January 2007.

The Dispatches programme showed preacher Abu Usamah at Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham calling for gay people to be executed.

“If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should be murdered, that’s my freedom of speech, isn’t it?” he told followers.

A scene in the advertising for the documentary also showed a preacher calling for people to “take that homosexual and throw him off a mountain.”

In August 2007 West Midlands police referred Undercover Mosque to the media regulator Ofcom and together with the Crown Prosecution Service issued a press release in which they said the words of three preachers featured within the programme had been “heavily edited” so their meaning was “completely distorted”.

Kevin Sutcliffe, deputy head of current affairs at Channel 4, said after the HIgh Court ruling: “This is a total vindication of the programme team in exposing extreme views being preached in mainstream British mosques.”